Heritage Minutes

An 1885 Robert Harris painting, A Meeting of the School Trustees, depicted in the 1998 Heritage Minute episode "Rural Teacher", on the benefits of pedagogy.

Heritage Minutes, formerly known as Historica Minutes: History by the Minute, is a series of sixty-second short films, each illustrating an important moment in Canadian history. The Minutes interrogate Canadian history, folklore and myths into dramatic story lines.[1][2][3] The Minutes themselves have become a part of Canadian culture and been the subject of academic studies.[4]

The Minutes were first introduced on March 31, 1991 as part of a one-off history quiz show hosted by Wayne Rostad.[5] Originally distributed to schools,[2] they appear frequently on Canadian television and in cinemas before movies and were later available online and on DVD.[4]

In 2009 "The Historica Foundation of Canada" merged with "The Dominion Institute" to become "The Historica-Dominion Institute" a national charitable organization.[6] In September 2013, the organization changed its name to "Historica Canada".[7] While the foundations have not paid networks to air Minutes and in the early years paid to have them run in cinema theaters across the country.[8] The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has ruled that Heritage Minutes are an "on-going dramatic series" thus each vignette counts as ninety-seconds of a station's Canadian content requirements.[9][10]

Not all of the Heritage Minutes episodes have actually aired. Seventy-nine of them are available for viewing online (as listed below); however the episodes on the 1972 Summit Series, Cyprus conflict, and Canadian Peacekeepers are not available online through Historica Canada.

Mona Parsons, a partisan World War II Allied agent in the Netherlands escapes execution and later imprisonment by the Nazis and meets her future husband who confirms her nationality to Canadian forces liberating the nation.[65]

At the Battle of Queenston Heights (October 13, 1812) Mohawk Chief John Norton and 80 Grand River warriors surprised hundreds of advancing American soldiers and skirmished with them for hours until reinforcements arrived and the battle was won.[88]

Maple Leaf Gardens

Considered one of the "cathedrals" of ice hockey, the construction and history of the Maple Leaf Gardens is featured.[89]

"Nursing Sisters" serve at the No. 3 Canadian Stationary Hospital in France during the First World War. The 80th installment of Historica Canada’s beloved collection of Heritage Minutes. Nursing Sisters commemorates the service and sacrifice of women on the front lines of the First World War through the retelling of a real event from May 1918. It is the story of two of the nearly 3000 trained nurses who served overseas. Narrated by Molly Parker and starring Siobhan Williams.